India's Infrastructure Development: Scindia Highlights Progress under Modi Govt

New Delhi, Dec 8 (PTI) India has made immense progress in infrastructure development under the Modi government and figures among the top five in various sectors and areas, Union Minister Jyotiraditya M Scindia said on Friday.

While the previous UPA regime ignored the development of the country, India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been consistently growing across the sectors, Scindia told reporters here.

A Rs 10 lakh crore budget for infrastructure by the present government shows its seriousness for the development of the country.

Area-wise, India might be the seventh largest country in the world, but today "we remain among the top five in various sectors and areas," Scindia said at the conference on 'overall development in the infrastructure in India'.

In the roads and highways sector, the minister said that the highway construction has grown to 37 km per day from just 12 km per day before 2014. The government aims to scale it up to 60 km per day during the Amritkaal period by 2047.

The network of highways touched 1.45 lakh kilometres under the regime of the present government as compared to 90 lakh km of highways the country had before 2014, the minister for Steel and Civil Aviation said.

"We have the second largest network of roads and highways in the world," he said.

The waiting time at the toll gates reduced significantly to 47 seconds from 734 seconds earlier, he added.

The high-speed corridor was of only 350 km and the government increased its length by 9 times to 30,100 km.

The government gave special focus to Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern states, including Manipur, for the development of road and railway projects, he said, adding that unlike the previous government which ignored the development in these regions.

In railways, India increased the track laying to 25,871 km from 14,985 km tracks laid between 2004 to 2014, Scindia said.

No new types of trains were added to the fleet of railways before 2014. The current government launched and added 23 high-speed Vande Bharat trains to the railway network for reduced travel time.

The government aims to further increase the number of Vande Bharat trains to around 4,500 by 2047.

The railway budget was increased to Rs 2.40 lakh crore from Rs 29,000 crore in 2013-14, he added.

At present, the logistics cost is at 12 per cent of the GDP and the prime minister aims to reduce it to 8 per cent of the GDP with PM Gati Shakti, mega projects in the logistics and highways sectors like Bharatmala.

In terms of economy, India is on its way to becoming the third-largest economy, leaving behind Germany and Japan to attain the spot, he said.

Several new initiatives were taken in the steel sector. The world's first road of slag, a waste, was constructed in Gujarat, the minister said.

Where only 74 airports were built until 2014 since Independence, the country added 75 airports and helipads in the last 10 years, taking the number to 149, and by 2030, this go to above 200, he added.